Today is a little like Labor Day except with a twist: because of oral arguments today in the Supreme Court on the Janus case, editorial boards, the media, social media, and the public are all focused on workers — in this case on their freedom to join together into unions.

Given the widespread interest, here are some links new and old on unions.

A new report by the Economic Policy Institute that documents the orchestrated, decades-old funding by right-wing individuals, foundations, and non-profits that led up to the Janus case. Today's New York Times story appears to draw heavily from the new EPI report althought it does not reference it.

Last Friday, we got the first national estimates of who benefits from the Trump Tax plan -- the "Unified Code for Rigging Our Tax Code Further to Benefit the 1%." While that's not the official title, it's more accurate than the Trump Administration name -- "the Unified Framework for Fixing Our Broken Tax Code." Last week's analysis by the Tax Policy Center showed that, by 2027 (Table 3 in the Center's report), 80% of the benefits would go to the top 1%, an increase from 53% in 2018 (Table

For those of us that follow inequality statistics, this December has been a blockbuster month. Most recently the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), in a prelude to a full reboot of its seminal report "Pulling Apart" (jointly produced with the Economic Policy Institute), released data (see the PA Fact Sheet) on family incomes in Pennsylvani

What should Pennsylvanians and Americans take away from the Presidential election? While fully digesting Trump's razor-thin victory will take time, national exit polls show that the President-elect won several groups by large margins: white non-college and rural voters, those who view the economy as fair or poor, and those whose family financial situation has worsened.

The day before the election, Pennsylvanians who go to the polls tomorrow have one last chance to consider the choices they will make.

Since Keystone Research Center is an economic think thank focused on the middle class, our efforts to inform voters have highlighted two issues: how the middle class is doing; and the policies that would benefit the middle class going forward.

Yesterday the Census Bureau released data from the American Community Survey showing that median household incomes in Pennsylvania rose by just over $2,400 in the last year, strong evidence that an economy nearing full employment generates rising wages for workers. Higher-income families have now surpassed their pre-Great Recession incomes but the lower-income half of families have not.

Airport workers in Philadelphia, fast-food workers, security guards and janitors have also been active and achieving victories in the Pennsylvania Fight for $15...with organizing efforts building in home care and child care.

Check out this graphic (also copied below) from the Center for American Progress, which explains how important the "and a union" part of the phrase "Fight for $15 and a union is." You see, $15 per hour in the near term would be a massive gain that drastically expands the number of living-wage jobs. But "and a union" — unions that once again represent at least 35% of the workforce anchored service industries that can't relocate — would make tens of millions of McJobs part of the middle class permanently.

Hats off to the Fight for $15 workers in Pennsylvania and across the country for helping to save America from itself and lighting the fire that eliminate the scourge of inequality from our job market, or political system, our communities, and our schools.

The Patriot-News yesterday highlighted a new report by the Pew Trust which finds that the middle class is shrinking. That’s interesting, especially given that, another part of Pew has been advocating for several years with former Enron billionaire John Arnold for policies that would further undermine the middle class. (Check on this link for one perspective on Arnold and Pew.)